US military gets into the 3D printing business

AN ISOLATED military outpost in the middle of hostile territory is a bad place for your equipment to break down. Replacement parts and fuel either have to be air-dropped or driven through dangerous territory. So the US military plans to make remote operating bases and camps self-sufficient, able to generate their own energy and even print their own gadgets.

Advances in radio, GPS and surveillance equipment have changed how the US military deploys its troops, says Bob Charette of the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office. Instead of being bunched in large groups that slowly march across enemy territory, soldiers are now strategically scattered in independent camps that span an entire war zone. These can range from operating bases with a few hundred soldiers to lookout posts of less than a dozen.

Such isolated bases are "the tip of the spear", says Pete Newell, who heads the US army's Rapid Equipping Force (REF). But they often have difficulty getting equipment. It can take months to receive parts that need to be shipped from the US.

To speed up the process, REF has put together three mobile laboratories in 6-metre-long shipping containers. Each lab comes with tools such as plasma cutters and jigsaws, a 3D printer that prints in plastic or metal and a scientist and engineer to run them. The labs, which cost about $2.8 million, can be picked up by helicopter and set down just about anywhere.

The first lab was shipped to Afghanistan in July, and a second will be deployed next month. So far, they have allowed soldiers to fix technical problems on the spot, Newell says. "Every 10th guy has a great idea." For instance, the 54 °C heat in Afghanistan was playing havoc with the batteries in a ground-penetrating radar system used to search for mines, so soldiers used the 3D printer to make a shielding case to protect them. It worked so well that everyone wanted one, Newell says, so the team emailed the design back to the US, where it could be mass-produced and distributed among other combat units.

Soldiers have also used the labs to design hooks for defusing explosive devices, and parts to repair robots. Printing weapons is not on the agenda, Newell says, although fixing them might be. He also envisions printing more complex objects, like batteries and solar panels, which has been shown to be technically feasible (Advanced Materials, doi.org/cm4r85).

Sherry Lassiter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's FabLab says that the labs could be helpful for rebuilding an area after a natural disaster as necessities such as drug delivery devices or antennas for Wi-Fi communication could be prototyped and printed quickly and easily. But she and Nadya Peek, also of FabLab, worry that for long-term disaster relief missions that can stretch to months or even years, resupplying the raw materials needed to run the labs might prove costly. "The military tends to do things very expensively," says Peek.

From the military's point of view, however, the price of the labs is outweighed by the ability to give combat units an extra degree of self-sufficiency while lowering the number of risky resupply missions that must be carried out.

"We can't be competing against the fragile [fuel and water] infrastructure that's often the root cause of the conflict in the first place," says Newell. "We're trying to get those unit locations completely off the grid."

Soldiers stay powered on the go

Soldiers now carry 4900 per cent more weight in the form of batteries than they did during the Vietnam war, says Bob Charette of the US Marines. So the Corps is testing gadgets to decrease the amount of power radios and GPS need, or draw it from another source. The Lightning Pack backpack, for example, bounces as its wearer walks and can convert that kinetic energy into 40 watts of power - enough to power a radio.

Naval Sea Systems Command, meanwhile, has created backpacks with solar panels attached for the same purpose. The panels charge bulletproof batteries, and a soldier can stay powered up for four days. The Marines will be testing these systems in Australia next year.

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